Through the eyes of Leslie Burke
by HungerWho37
Summary: AU: The Terabithian rope snapped. But the wrong person fell. How will Leslie cope when the impossible occurs and Jesse is taken from her forever? She learns that keeping your mind wide open doesn't grant all wishes. Doesn't mean she's going to stop trying.
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N: My friend gave me the idea for this. I suppose I've thought about it before in the past as well but have never really had the guts to write it before.**_

_**Now, I have read the book Bridge to Terabithia but it was so long ago that most of the stuff will probably be based off the movie as I can't remember much from the book.**_

_**This fic is dedicated to Lisa Hill. If you know the story, you'll know why.**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Bridge To Terabithia.**_

Another day. Another novel.

Welcome to the life of Mr. and Mrs Burke.

Leslie passed her parents on the way out the door, barely capturing their attention as their heads stayed buried in their laptops, tapping away on the keypads. She found her parents' oblivious trait endearing more than offending, and she couldn't help smiling as she slipped out the door and crossed her garden. Her mother and father wouldn't have stopped her anyway. They believed in the freedom to move as you like and do as you want and would never stop Leslie on her path of enlightenment.

Plus, they liked Jesse. A lot.

Even merely thinking of his name made her heart stutter and her smile widen. He'd accepted her, became her friend so easily that she wondered if there was something wrong with him. Normally, no one could handle her general weirdness and tendancy to go a tad off track, letting her imaginative mind take ahold of her speech. This was when she'd normally scare people. But not Jesse.

Never Jesse.

Jesse accepted Terabithia.

Jesse accepted _her_.

Terabithia had lived in her mind ever since she was a child, nestled in the deep recesses of her brain, growing and expanding, begging to be released from it's cage and to be set free. Every school she'd ever attended, every person she'd ever met, was judged by the Terabithians and passed off on harsh judgement. Like there was only ever going to be one person who could be king of her world and the Terabithians knew who they wanted. And they wanted Jesse as king just as much as they wanted her as queen.

And when she'd finally brought him to the swing and told him about it, he accepted it so freely. So happily that Leslie couldn't believe it. He didn't spit 'freak' at her or call her crazy. He believed her and, bit by bit, they brought the world to life, Terabithia no longer being just her world, but his too. Their world. Together.

Leslie broke out into a run, just thinking of the infinite possibilites that could exist in their land, their world, their place. The things they could rise up, tear down, the things that could make real, the things they could wipe out . . . it was wonderous and scary and amazing and beautiful that she was dying to get across the road to Jesse as quickly as possible.

"Sorry, he's not here right now," one of his older sisters-was the name Glenda or Brenda?-as soon as she answered the door.

"Do you know when he'll be getting back?" Leslie asked. Jesse hadn't mentioned about going anywhere to her. Then again, not everything he did had to go through her but still Leslie had at least thought he would have told her.

His sister shook her head. "Nope, sorry. He took off early this morning. Don't know where the hell he's went."

Leslie nodded, not really having listened probably, the only thing she heard being, 'Nope, sorry.' "Well, thanks anyway," she said. She turned and started walking back across the road. What did she do now? So many of her hours had been spent with Jesse in Terabithia that she could barely remember what she had normally done in her spare time before she came here and met him. Write something? A short story to pass the time until he came back? Leslie sighed and kicked a rock across the road.

P.T lifted his head as she returned, head tilted questionally. _"To Terabithia?"_ he seemed to ask.

Leslie shook her head and sat down in the wet grass beside him. "Nope Prince, sorry. Apparently the king is gone on a quest," she sighed. P.T whined and climbed into her lap. He nudged her thigh with his nose and whined again, trying to get her to move. "What is it Terrian?" she asked. P.T only whined like that when there were scrorges or trolls around. But they only existed in Terabithia, not in reality. So what was wrong with him?

She lay a gentle hand on his head and shushed him, softly stroking his fur. "It's okay," she soothed. "We'll go later. When Jesse gets back, yeah?" P.T whined. Leslie wondered what he was sensing. Something bad must be coming. What though, she wasn't exactly sure.

Leslie waited on Jesse coming back for an hour. She sat in the grass, comforting P.T and staring at the cloudless sky. It was strange, how quickly the weather could turn from relentless rain that would batter the ground with frightening abandon to a bright blue sky and shining sun that held the promise of humidity. Leslie didn't mind. She liked it when things were unpredictable.

Finally deciding that she'd have to catch Jesse some other time, Leslie upped sticks and went back inside. She had to coax P.T in with the promise of treats because the dog was seriously troubled. Probably the rapid weather change. That can mess with animals in all sorts of ways.

The sun was burning brightly in the middle of the sky, shining in through the sitting room window and setting the room on fire once more. Now completely furnished, the effect wasn't as nearly as magical as it had been when they'd first painted it. When the room was nothing but a bare canvas, ready to be made into something perfect. She remembered the gleam in Jesse's eyes when her father had told him he had an artist's hand and she smiled to herself.

"No Jess today?" her mother asked as Leslie sat down on the sofa and threw her feet up to prop them up against the arm rest. She was taking a brief break from her writing to have a cup of tea to help clear her head while her father continued to type away on his laptop as if no-one else was in the room but himself.

"No," Leslie answered, giggling as P.T leapt onto her lap and buried his face into her shoulder. "He's gone somewhere. I'm gonna call on him later." Her mother nodded, accepting the answer, tugging her laptop back into her lap to continue her work.

Leslie let her head fall back against the arm rest and let her eyes slide closed, letting herself to get wholly consumed into her imagination for a while.

_**~T.T.E.O.L.B~**_

She was awakened by P.T's barking. The dog was desperate, his barks harsh and high pitched. When Leslie sat up, she noticed her parents were no longer in the room, probably having migrated to another room to proceed with their work. It was nearing evening by now, the sun just beginning to set and the sky starting to tint pink.

"What's wrong, Prince?" she asked. P.T barked again, his tail wagging frantically as he pawed at the front door, nails creating thin scratches along the wood. Hmpf, typical. He must need to pee. He continued to bark as Leslie heaved off the sofa and approached the door, unlatched the lock and pulled the door open. P.T bolted out, taking off across the grass. Leslie watched, momentarliy thinking that he was going to pee, before realizing that this was not the case.

P.T ran out just as an ambulance sped past, down the dirtpath in the direction she'd normally go in with Jesse when they dumped their bags after school. Curious, she followed P.T as he ran off after the vechile. His paws kicked up dirt as he sprinted after it, and her boots crunched against the gravel as she stayed hot on his heels.

Leslie wondered what had happened. A farm accident? Some animal running rampand and hurting people? The possibilities were endless as she came to a slowing stop by the tree near the Terabithian rope. P.T didn't stop until he reached the police tape that was stretched out between two trees and ran right out and around the river bank where the rope normally hung.

Leslie ducked underneath it and slipped between two police officers without them noticing. Her heart pounded in excitment as she walked along the path to pass the river bank. Only she didn't pass it. She stopped. She stopped dead in her tracks.

Parked by the river bank was the ambulance that had sped past, and a grunery was set up right by the bank's edge. The paramedics were pulling someone up. Pulling someone up from the bottom. Leslie looked up and her heart stopped.

The Terabithian rope had snapped.

"No," she murmered under her breath. She watched in a panic as a paramedic emerged from the river with a body in his arms. A body as limp and as lifeless as a rag doll. A body she recognized well.

Jesse.

His head hung over the end of the paramedic's elbow, eyes locked open and mouth parted in a silent scream. His skin was pale as snow, almost like porcelin, and his clothes were sopping wet. A lump forced it's way up Leslie's throat as she watched the paramedic fully appear from the bottom of the river.

"Is he gone?" one of the paramedics asked.

"I think he hit his head and drowned. There's no heartbeat," another answered. "He's gone."

"May God have mercy on his poor soul."

Jesse, dead? No. That wasn't right. That couldn't be right. Jesse wasn't dead. He was away out, like his sister had told her. "Jesse," she whispered under her breath. Unable to control it, her voice rose like water breaking out of a dam with full force, "JESSE!"

A police officer appeared by her side and took her arm. "I'm sorry Miss, you're going to have to step back behind the-"

"JESSE!" Leslie screamed, wrenching her arm free and running towards the paramedic. Prince Terrian bolted out from under the tape, seeing her in distress, and went straight for the paramedic, thinking he was the one at fault. He bit the man's ankle, ripping a scream of pain from him and causing him to drop the body in his arms.

Leslie leapt forward and caught Jesse, unable to hold his weight and immediately crumpling to her knees. He was cold in her arms. Stiff. Dead. "Come on Jesse, you're not dead. Stop scaring me and wake up." She half expected him to do so. For his eyes to gain their life again and for him to say, "Hey Leslie! I was just kidding! I'm not dead!"

But he didn't.

His hazel eyes bored into her, clouded over and dead. He didn't blink, didn't breathe, didn't shiver in her arms from the chill of the cold water that soaked his clothes and body.

P.T whined and nudged Jesse's arm with his nose, licking his cheek and nuzzling his neck. Fat tears spurted down Leslie's cheeks as the truth finally came to her. This was her fault. All her fault. She told him to swing the rope, she taught him the ways of Terabithia. This was her fault, her fault, _all her goddamn fault._

"I'm sorry Miss," one of the paramedics said. "He's gone."

He's gone.

Jesse's gone.

And it's all her fault.

_**A/N: Waste of time? Good, bad, horrible? Worth continuing? Let me know! But be nice about it, okay? Thanks!**_

_**Please R&R! :)**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Hey guys, thanks for all the lovely reviews! Here's part two for you all! ^_^**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Bridge To Terabithia. I wish my mind was that brilliant though.**_

The heavens cried that night. Just for that one night, the rain started up again and the wind battered the earth. The skies howled and screamed, trees swayed and some even broke down from their roots and fell to the ground. Leslie found it fitting. Even the weather was angry at fate. Fate was a horrible woman who enjoyed other people's despair and pain. So the weather matched Leslie's mood. Horror. Despair. Anger. The want to scream and shout at the world for doing this.

But most of all, Leslie was numb.

The paramedics had to sedate her to prise her away from Jesse's body. She remembered protesting, screaming at them to back off, P.T growling to support her point of staying away, and crying at the prone body in her arms to wake up. They had to sedate her with a needle in her arm and had to take her to hospital with Jesse.

She woke up in a white room where her parents sat by her bed. Her mother's eyes were brimmed with tears and her father's face was grave. It was then she knew. Never mind holding him in her arms or being told by the paramedics that he was gone, it was the look of terror on her parents' faces that told her for sure that he was dead. Because they didn't know how they were going to tell her, how to inform her that the only proper friend she had ever obtained all her life had died.

Leslie spent the rest of the night blaming herself. The doctors wanted to keep her in for observation to make sure that all of the sedative had worked it's way out of her system. She listened to the rain as it pounded her room's small square window. As the wind howled in misery and the trees rattled their anger. The weather didn't want to accept it just as she hadn't wanted to. She tried to tell herself that he wasn't dead. He wasn't dead. He couldn't be dead. Jesse? No. He wouldn't die as easily as that.

But he had.

He was gone.

Leslie lay on her bed, curled up in a small ball swathed in the thin sterile covers, muttering to herself the many ways that it was her fault.

She'd introduced Jesse to Terabithia. The Terabithians had accepted him. They liked him. More than that, they loved him. They wanted him as their king. It was their fault that she had decided to use the rope as the gateway into the world. Their fault that she'd told him to swing on it anytime he wanted to enter their world. It was the Terabithians' faults.

But the Terabithians were frigments of her imagination.

It was her fault.

The last person to have seen Jesse alive was their music teacher Miss Edmunds. The reason he had been gone that morning Leslie had called on him was that their teacher had taken him on a two person field trip to the Art Museum. After getting out of her car that afternoon, no-one else ever saw him again alive. His bag was found dumped at the side of the dirtpath. The dirtpath they raced up nearly every day to get to Terabithia.

He'd went to Terabithia persumably thinking that Leslie was already there. Because that's where she always was.

"I should have been there," Leslie mumbled to no-one in particular. The empty room responded with silence. Silence that judged everything she said or did. It was like the walls had ears and was just bouncing back what she'd said so that it sounded like agreement.

Why had he done that though? The rain had made the river rise so high that it was nearly over flowing the river bank. It was obviously dangerous to have tried to swing across. Jesse was a bright kid, why had he tried to do something so stupidly hazardous?

_Great Leslie, now you're blaming him!_ Leslie thought to herself._ You're blaming the one who's died when it's still so clearly your fault! You're a horrible person._

The next morning, the storm had ceased and the sun was shining. As her parents discharged her from hospital, Leslie had scowled at the bright weather. It didn't make sense. The storm should have continued on into the morning and onwards. It should have stayed to wreck the world and pull it down piece by piece. The sky shouldn't be clear and blue, didn't mother nature get it? Jesse was dead. The world should be dark and depressing, just like Leslie's soul felt.

"Once we get home, we'll whip you up a nice breakfast, okay?" Her mother said in an overly cheery voice. Leslie looked at her with a dull expression. She knew she was just trying to keep it together for her sake but she didn't want that. She wanted her mother to express how she really felt about it all so she could find out if she was crazy or not. If anyone else felt as dead inside as she did.

"Then we'll go to the Aaron's house and pay our respects," her father said.

"Respects," Leslie repeated, as if her dad had just said an alien word. No. She didn't want to go to Jesse's house and pay her respects. Because that was accepting that Jesse was dead. But Jesse wasn't dead. Leslie blinked back tears and wiped them with the back of her hand. "It's only the day after they found his body. Aren't they going to have an investigation or something? Surely they aren't going with the Terabith-I mean, the rope snapping?" She hoped dearly that there was something deeper at play that hadn't anything to do with the rope having snapped. Because then it mightn't have been her fault.

"Honey, they found him at the bottom of the river with the other end of the rope wrapped around his wrist," her mother said gently as they climbed into her dad's van.

Leslie's heart sank into the pit of her stomach and she fought the urge to cry. "He died on his own," she whispered. "I should have been there with him."

"Don't think like that sweetie," her dad said. "You couldn't have known."

Leslie had always believed that there was a connection between herself and Jesse. A length of telepathic sting connecting their minds together so that when one person felt something, the other felt it as well. But she hadn't felt anything when he'd died. Not a spark or a stab of pain. Just silence.

"He died on his own," she repeated.

"I know, it's horrible," her mother said quietly. "He wasn't in pain though, the doctors say. He went unconcious almost as soon as he hit his head and that's how he drowned."

"Lungs, filling with water. I try to breathe but I can't. I am sinking, slowly, to the bottom. Every breath hurts. My heart is no longer beating as it should. It's slowing down. I am going to die. Slowly, slowly, I can see death approaching, I can almost feel it-"

"Leslie, stop," her father pleaded. "I know you're hurting but-"

"Betrayed by the rope, the rope I trusted," Leslie contined, her voice bodering on hysterical. "The rope we used to swing on together. 'Tilt your head back' she'd told me. 'Tilt your head back and you'll feel like you're flying'. As I swing I can hear the water flowing below but it feels like a thousand miles away, not close enough for me to worry about-"

"Leslie-"

"Stop the car!" Leslie cried out, struggling to breathe and feeling oppressed by the small confines of the van. Her father slammed on the brakes and the car came to a halt. Suffocating, Leslie stumbled out and started running down the road, her breaths short and sharp as she struggled to calm down. Her sneakers pounded the tarmac as she ran all the way home. A slow burn began to take hold in her muscles and caused them to seize up but she continued to run regardless. To run from the truth.

The truth that Jesse was gone.

_Close your eyes and keep your mind wide open._

Leslie squeezed her eyes shut and continued to run, not caring that she might trip over something. She kicked in the door of her mind so it was lying wide open. For any possiblity to come in or any thought to go out. Many things flew in and changed her perspective of Jesse's death.

What if the Darkmaster stole his soul?

What if it was a trick of the Darkmaster's minions?

What if he wasn't really dead?

Invigorated and hopes lifting, Leslie ran faster, knowing that she had to get to Terabithia as quickly as possible to gather help to save Jesse. The snapped rope posed a problem but she would figure something out once she reached the river bank.

_You're not going to win Darkmaster._

Her legs felt like jelly as she finally arrived at the turning into her driveway. She came to a stumbling stop and took a moment to catch her breath. As she braced her hands on her thighs and fought to be able to breathe properly again, she glanced over at Jesse's house.

Maybelle was sitting on the front step, one of the barbies she'd gave her held in her small hand. It didn't look to be too beaten up and from the stories the young girl had told her about the games she played with her dolls, Leslie had half expected all of her toys to have been ripped apart or bitten in two.

Tears were dripping from the little girl's eyes, sliding down her cheeks and splashing onto her arms. Leslie felt tempted to go over to her and comfort her, to tell her that everything was going to be alright and that she was going to get her big brother back.

But just as she'd taken a step forward to head over there, Maybelle, in a fit of rage, ripped the head off her barbie and threw it to the ground before throwing her own head into her arms and sobbing into her knees. Her father came out of the front door and sat down beside her, pulling the girl into his arms and softly stroking her head to calm her down. Leslie felt her energy drain at the man's expression. He was wearing a serene mask for the sake of his daughter but Leslie could see through it and into the man's soul.

It made her realize the truth.

This wasn't some game.

Death wasn't a game.

Life was the game.

And Jesse had lost.

_**Let me know what you think folks! As I've said, most of it is based from the movie since it's been at least three years since I read the book. I've asked for it for Christmas though and I can't wait to read it again! :)**_

_**Please R&R! :D**_


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